Grants for Higher Education

Where are higher education grants going?

Individual major donors, notably affluent alumni, mostly give to support capital projects, financial aid, or specific departments or research. Large gifts predominantly fund endowments, while smaller gifts predominantly fund research, CASE reports.

Foundation grants for higher education often focus on particular disciplines. For example, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a stalwart funder of the humanities, while the Simons Foundation is devoted to science and math research.

Foundation and intermediary grants also support initiatives to boost access to and success in higher education, especially for low-income students, first-generation students, and historically underrepresented students including students of color. Corporate support tends to come in the form of partnerships for research or workforce development.

In recent years, major donors have made large gifts to support HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions, and to cover medical school tuition.

Other focuses of gifts and grants for higher education include STEM education and addressing the student mental health crisis. Some funders give to support higher education in particular geographic areas, such as those backing rural education.

History of philanthropy for higher education

Philanthropy for U.S. higher education has a long history, often dated back to John Harvard’s foundational donation in 1636 to the university that bears his name. In the nineteenth century, philanthropy played a leading role in the founding of private colleges across the U.S. Some of the most famous names in American philanthropy, Rockefeller and Carnegie, substantially shaped American higher education through their philanthropy, Steven Mintz explains in Inside Higher Ed. Today, fundraising and philanthropy for institutions of higher education are highly professionalized, with most colleges and universities staffing robust development, or “advancement,” programs to raise funds from individual and institutional donors. Alongside private philanthropy, federal funding for higher education provided major support for decades until the 2025 Trump administration decided to end this “mutually beneficial” arrangement.

Gaps in higher education funding

Philanthropy for higher education has never been evenly distributed. Higher education fundraising has long been centered around relationships with affluent alumni donors, one of several factors that leads to some institutions receiving disproportionate shares of education philanthropy. Between 2014 to 2023, the 20 institutions of higher education that raised the most money raised about 26 to 29% of total annual giving to higher ed institutions, CASE found. Combined with related factors such as a large endowment gap, this means that some institutions of higher education are well funded while many others – including community colleges, HBCUs, tribal colleges, rural schools, smaller public schools, and smaller colleges – are under-resourced by philanthropy.

Some recent large gifts, for example MacKenzie Scott’s and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ high-profile donations to HBCUs, have attempted to ameliorate those gaps. Still, there remains a significant wealth and funding gap between HBCUs and predominantly white-serving institutions, Denise A. Smith, deputy director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, explains.

Now, nearly all institutions of higher education are threatened by the Trump administration’s war on U.S. higher education, which involves massive funding cuts, attempts to control what is taught as well as hiring and admissions, and threats to universities’ tax-exempt status. 

There may be some hope in public-private partnerships between philanthropy and government at the state level. IP’s Mike Scutari reported on Arnold Ventures’ efforts as a model. But in any case, the enormous funding gaps resulting from the federal grant cancellations will affect universities of all sizes across the country. Inside Philanthropy separately addresses gaps in research funding for specific academic areas such as science research and humanities research.